Portrait of a Man on a non-ancient bust

Roman art

The only ancient parts of this portrait are a portion of the neck and the lower half of the head, including the join of the nose. It was heavily restored in its current form as a bust in view of its installation in the vestibule of the Casino in the nineteenth century. The sculpture portrays a balding older man with an elongated, oval-shaped face. His mouth is closed, and his lips are thin. The accentuated lines to the sides of his nose and mouth and under his eyes and the deep dimple on his chin contribute to the verism of the portrait. This realism and the purely graphic rendering of the hair allow us to date the work to the late Caesarean period.

Object details

Commentary

This portrait, of unknown provenance, was first mentioned in the Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese of 1833, which notes its entry into the family’s collection and installation in a niche in the portico. It is likely that this is when the small surviving ancient fragment (with a portion of the neck and the lower half of the head, including the join of the nose) was heavily restored in its current form as a bust.

The sculpture portrays a balding older man with an elongated, oval-shaped face. Looking at the ancient portion, we can see that the hair is rendered with fine incisions defining the individual locks, in accordance with a method that was popular from the first century BCE to the late Republican period. The figure’s mouth is closed, and his lips are thin. The accentuated lines to the sides of his nose and mouth and under his eyes and the deep dimple on his chin contribute to the verism of the portrait. This realism allows us to date the work to the late Caesarean period. As observed by Paolo Moreno, the sculpture includes several features typical of portraits of Julius Caesar, specifically the type found on coins minted in 44/43 BCE. These features include the conformation of the head and hair, which are also seen in the famous portrait unearthed during excavations led by Luciano Bonaparte in 1825 at Tusculum (Castello di Agliè; Borda 1943-44, pp. 347ff; Buccino 2008 with bibliography). As is well known, Borda noted a number of anomalies in that head, which he had arranged in a vertical position. Specifically, a dip in the upper part of the cranium and the excessive development of the left parietal bone, interpreted as physical deformations of Caesar’s head (‘clinocephaly’ and ‘plagiocephaly’). A recent reinterpretation of the original pose of the Tuscolano portrait of Julius Caesar has revealed that both supposed deformations are the result of a visual perception of the work that emphasises the baldness (an original physiognomic feature) and a face that is wider than average and narrows towards the chin (Carotta 2016).

Although only a small portion of the ancient sculpture remains, the Borghese portrait can be considered a typical example of the crude descriptive realism popular during the late Republican period, a conventional feature of which was the purely graphic rendering of the hair, as attested by numerous late-Republican portraits. The head was presumably originally inserted into a togate statue. From the time of the Social Wars, the toga had come to symbolise achievement of the status of civis romanus.

Jessica Clementi